Monday, August 08, 2016

Hungary game:
• mods to give a lot of countries focus trees: Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Yugoslavia, Iran, China - notably not us, but it could be fun clusterfuck with ten factions
• most gameplay affecting mods (fewer majors, extra support companies, no resistance, no xp for army changes, no guarantees on neutrals) reversed - I'm not sure if they make game better or not
• still keeping extra straits, accurate ledger, final score fixes (I don't think that does anything in game), and some graphics mods

So the first problem is that we ought to have cores or at least claims for all of 1914 Kingdom of Hungary, and we only have ones for small bits of Slovakia. Hungary had claims on Northern Transylvania and Vojvodina in 1.0, but Swedish bastards removed them!

The second problem is that we're kingdom ruled by regent admiral Horthy, and yet we don't have any fleet, or even any sea access.

The third problem is unremoved kebab and unremoved kebab guarantor UK.

The fourth is that somehow game thinks historically non-aligned Hungary is somehow fascist. Actually, that's more an opportunity than a problem.

So let's start by reactivating our only existing claims on Czechoslovakia, and then as soon as possible on Romania.

Conclusions from war with Czechoslovakia:
• my army (6inf, no supports, got art support mid-war, but it with maybe 20% of artillery pieces specified) can't fight even to close a pocket
• Czechs forgot to put anyone in Prague

I tried to squeeze in Yugoslavia after Romania, but declaring war on Romania made tension go to 30% and started guarantee spam, so I had to abandon that one. Before I'd say "well, at least 2 more guarantees and I can do whatever I want", but after campaign where they made 12 total... Vojvodina true Hungarian clay! And by the way if Hungary had claims it had in 1.0, that would actually keep tension below guarantee spam level.

War with Romanians was fairly similar, all micro, fun with shitty armies on both sides, undefended capital.

Well, now I don't have any way to attack anyone - anybody I fabricate on will be instantly guaranteed by the Allies, and spamming a lot of simultaneous fabrications is not as reliable as I once thought it would be.

I can always just wait and see how things go from here.
#hoi4 We got one sea, but straits are blocked.

Long countries are easy to cut, and they built defensive mountains are on wrong side.

Czechs had about twice my army size (theirs are 9inf, mine are 6inf), so I had to trap them to make it more even.

Always leave one unit in your capital, or this happens. I couldn't clear even one pocket in less than a month, that's why 4 pockets are left behind the lines.

I gave it a try, and started a bunch of simultaneous fabrications, trying to sneak in Austria before UK guarantee spam. And of course fucking UK guaranteed Yugoslavia, Belgium, Finland, and Austria. And France with barely 0.2 mana/day decided to spend 25 of it on Yugoslavia as well.

Of course that guarantee was only good against me, it did nothing to stop the Anschluss. And those damn guarantees don't even lower world tension to any significant degree, contrary to what they're supposed to.

Germans were at least kind enough to give me Vojvodina by national focus, because obviously UK and French guarantee for Yugoslavia is only binding against big scary Hungary, not good uncle Hitler.

And then it turned out, after Yugoslavia was already half the size, it figured out it doesn't want to surrender the rest and the German-Allies war started. Meanwhile Greece became German puppet, and Bulgaria grew from 3 to 5 states, so was a much more tempting target.

At least Poland founded its own faction, so I had a cute plan that I'd fabricate on Poland and Bulgaria, then DoW Bulgaria, and only fight Miedzymorze this way. Of course UK guaranteed Bulgaria, as if it didn't have own fucking war with Germany already.

And Soviets in a ridiculous programming bug got claims on Eastern Poland and all Baltic states from Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact without even reaching their "claims on Poland/Baltics" buttons, or without Germany even having decency to go "Danzig or War".

Soviets got their CB 4 months before me - and they were able to cheese removing Great Purge penalties early, without a real war. I barely managed to get Krakow for 10 victory points, but fuck that shit. We're fabricating on Moscow now!

They only have 4x as many divisions, what could possibly go wrong?

#hoi4 So much for my Miedzymorze plan. There's only one way to go, and that way is to Moscow!

New focus trees in action. Biggest change is that China is actually too strong for Japan now, but things might happen in Scandinavia too.

Here's some quotes from 1.1 patch notes: "Tweaked guarantee desire [...] Should keep Allies from going guarantee crazy". They apparently tweaked in fucking wrong way, as guarantee spam is much worse than I remember it from 1.0.

And all the guarantee spam targets little Hungary, which is just trying to reunify lands which belonged to Kingdom of Hungary for nearly a thousand years, and yet which somehow doesn't have cores or claims on any of them. Soviets trying to conquer Poland? Who gives a shit.

At least I hoped Poland would hold the line for a while so I could sneak into Warsaw, get half the warscore, and maybe divide it in half with the Soviets, but no such luck. So now I have to attack them mid-war, or they'll get 90% of Poland and Lithuania, leaving with without anything. I'm not going to call Germany unless things are going really poorly, they're just my insurance policy.

So as you can see, it's not all that bad. But it will get worse once Soviets annex Poland. Our army's philosophy is "never enough firepower". Soviet army is 3x bigger, but more diverse with light tanks, motorized, planes, ships and so on.

Anyway, time to strike - first goal is to take Warsaw to get the warscore in Polish war, and if possible actually keep Poland alive longer.

And of course that failed miserably, Poland surrendered to the Soviets, and instead of peace conference, they got it all, ignoring my warscore. Fuck! And since I was trying to get as much clay as fast as possible instead of pocketing, my losses were pretty severe, only 3 times less than Soviet's, which is no way to fight such war.

Well, second goal - destroy Soviet ability to wage war by grabbing as much of their industrial base as possible. That sort of starts working, balance in number of divisions is now worse at 89 vs 305, but I'm finally ahead of them in miltary factories.

Unfortunately I was unable to capture any significant amount of Soviet troops in Poland, they mostly managed to withdraw East. So I'll need to just shorten the frontlines in some defensible line before I plan anything more.

I got hit by a truly ridiculous bug - in the middle of the war big chunk of Eastern Poland flipped to Soviets - it wasn't actually too bad, I just had to move some of my frontline troops back to retake it.

I finally managed to pocket 32 divisions in Eastern Poland, as well as a bunch of smaller pockets - unfortunately they managed to evacuate their Danzig divisions by sea.

I decided to pause and rebalance the frontlines, as just pushing the Soviets had poor K:D ratio, but the fucking AI managed to withdraw all troops from a few tiles in Crimea I had this way, and Soviets got it back. I hate it so much.

So far the war has been going very slowly. I managed to pocket Lithuania, and push a bit, but that's not blitzkrieg, that's WW1 style trench warfare. Too bad they don't have 10% NU like they used to back then.

In other words, Soviets is smaller by 55% of tanks, 10% of their artillery, and their 20% of their men. Their not doing too great, but they're far from broken.

Right now my best idea is to cut armies they have in Crimea - that's about 50-60 divisions. Such losses would be very difficult for them to replace, even if that would stretch my frontlines uncomfortably.

Meanwhile Germans are wrecking Western Europe.

#hoi4 Germans are doing really well including puppet Greece (but no Danzig or Sudetenlands). I'm going to focus on encircling Crimea and maybe pocketing Caucasus. Or I could pause and regroup for a while, I have small equipment deficit (less than a month).

WTF? Even by standards of buggy focus buttons that's ridiculous.

It was only temporary inconvenience.

First big pocket, but Soviets replaced all those troops just fine.

Second big pocket. This time Soviets had much harder time replacing their losses.

After operation "pocket Crimea" the Soviets were reduced from 237 to just 200 divisions - only twice as much as me.

Unfortunately it was my manpower that was hurting not theirs, so I went up to "All Adults Serve", which is quite painful. Not quite as painful as it says on the tooltip, as penalties to production and construction speed are applied to base not multiplicatively, so for example -30% factory output is really 170% to 140% (-18%), and -30% construction speed is from 150% to 120% (-20%), or something like that.

On the other hand, my geopolitical situation was really good - Soviet Union was on its way out, even if it would take a while, I had great followup of going after China next, Germany couldn't attack me because I was in their faction, Allies couldn't attack me because they had no CB and I didn't join German wars (they called me every now and then, but I ignored that).

So the next step was to take Caucasus - and keep pushing on whole frontline whenever good opportunity arises, but not too aggressively as I was still suffering from equipment shortages.

It doesn't seem like that much clay on the map, but small Western part of the Soviet Union is most of their industry and victory points are, so those casual pushes often get nice cities like Minsk and Kharkov without much opposition.

I decided to expand the war a bit and fabricated on Latvia and Estonia, but UK guaranteed Estonia. Seriously? Do they have any idea how screwed they are? At least as fascist it only takes me 25 days to fabricate while at war with a major, so UK didn't get enough mana to guarantee Latvia as well. It wasn't exactly "Around Maginot", but it got me some nice clay, and it let me take a shortcut to Leningrad.

Meanwhile Caucasus front crush whoever was there, and took Stalingrad.

3/4 of men Soviets ever recruited are no longer fighting. Then again 1/3 of mine aren't either, but I'm not sure if that counts before or after field hospitals.

By the way you know what would be useful - some indication where the hell enemy air planes are coming from. Soviets kept bombing Western Poland, which made no sense whatsoever, but their nearest airport was really far away.

I was really curious where the hell bombers Soviets are sending to Poland are coming from - and apparently they're from Moscow and Tula (one state south from Moscow). Well, so much for my strategy of prioritizing taking airfields so they can't use their air force.

Soviets were still a good deal away from capitulation, but their army was weaker than mine, even in just numbers. I could finally do panzer push column with plain infantry.

I could have rushed Moscow, but for now I used that to make huge pockets. Then again, I could do both - after closing all the pockets from Moscow to the West Soviets were reduced to 67 divisions, but still wouldn't capitulate.

That's actually fine, as I'd really like Turkey and Iran (who conquered Afghanistan, as it has custom national focuses with some CBs) to both join Comintern before it all ends.

Fortunately I didn't need to occupy all of them - I think even one tile works, but just to be sure I got a few victory points.

So now Hungary is strong. And we captured a lot of planes - we're up to 1893 (that's not all Soviets got, but most). Apparently ships all get scuttled. Oh well.

I finally researched my ways up to 1941 medium sparts and 1940 heavy fighters, and I started building them, but they won't be ready for war in China in any significant numbers.

Next step is obviously taking China, who's doing surprisingly well and even took over Tibet, and I'm going to get various Middle Eastern minors while I'm at war with them.

A quick peak at Chinas shows they have together 1806k men under arms, 2291 planes, and not a single tank or artillery piece, so in any war they'll get shredded to pieces.

Japan has 594k men and decent amount of proper hardware. So far Chinas lost 2.54m men and Japan lost 1.23m.

The good news is that Japan is not part of the Axis, so I could take Manchuria and Korea for myself, but they might join as soon as war starts.

#hoi4 Towed artillery is a fine tank.

Once enemy army is broken, massive pockets are easy to make.

The great Red Army, almost all gone, but before we finish it off, a short Southern detour is needed.

Just push enough to make them part of peace conference. I even got capital of Iran. A bit surprised neither of them is a great power - I'm playing without great power fix, but the list is very sensible, without even Raj.

I declared war on China three months later, but I wasn't actually interested in getting Manchuria, as I wasn't even sure if I'd get it or the Japanese would.

Instead I used that to get 80% fabrication speed bonus, which seems to be the only way around guarantee spam.

OOB is that I have artillery and they don't, and that's all anybody needs to know. Chinese attacked my forces on Manchurian borders, but they had 12:1 K:D ratio. I was seriously worried that China will lose so much equipment (manpower it can replace) that Japan will be able to wreck them and take most of China for itself.

Japan joined the Axis, probably because Axis member was also at war with China, which is not totally crazy logic - so I definitely did not want to push with my Manchurian troops, and give that captured clay to Japan.

Instead I got Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Oman with one army.

Two more armies went after Comintern (Mongolia, Tannu Tuva), and Sinkiang which chose to join Comintern somehow. As Tannu Tuva was the only major being faction leader, all capitulated as soon as I took capital of Tannu Tuva.

Both of these armies later went after Nepal and Bhutan and got into China from my side. Tibet was conquered by China a while before (as was Afghanistan by Iran).

Then I pushed from the West, no rush, just getting it done. The main risk being that Japan, who inexplicably has massive warscore, would actually get most of it. I think if you take a victory point, it's still counted as yours for warscore reasons even if you lose it later.

The big question I was wondering about was who to fight next - the Allies (or basically any minor, as everyone seems to be guaranteed by them by now) or the Axis.

I couldn't realistically finish off either as I have literally 0 ships, and no paratrooper technology. What I could do is maybe paradrop Japan - but then here's German OOB:

And on top of that there's also Italy (578k men), Japan (681k men), and Greece (119k men) to deal with.

Then it would be even harder to invade UK than Japan, and USA would probably join the Allies.

Fortunately I no longer need to wonder, as USA is fabricating CB on me, and they'll surely join the Allies as soon as they declare war.

Actually disregard that, "United States is justifying war against us" tooltip is fake, and they're really using their anti-German button. As long as I don't accept the call, they can't actually do anything.
#hoi4 Pushing from side where I get it, not from side where Japan would. I got them a few tiles to make frontline shorter. Chinese losses against me made Japan do a bit better in Korea and their landing area than they were doing before, but I think I can get most of it before Japan breaks out.

War plan. Manchuria arrow is fake, Japan would get all of that not me. There are downsides to being in a faction.

You had one job... Province abandoned by battle planner being a fort only makes it more ridiculous.

Factions. USA will get CB on Germany (tooltip saying it's on me lies), and will presumably join the Allies soon enough. Sweden in allies due to its focus buttons from the mod.

I completely forgot Netherlands got their focus buttons too. They went fascist, but they're still in the Allies.

I randomly noticed that in lands under occupation by my faction members, resistance is 100% and every single factory is sabotaged pretty much as a rule. After a few campaigns without resistance, that's something new. That's presumably going to make Germany far weaker than it seems, so maybe I should backstab them soon?

USA joined the Allies and declared war on Germany. Spain joined the Axis.

China didn't really resist - artillery vs no artillery makes numbers fairly irrelevant, as Zulus have found a while ago.

Unfortunately Japan got far more than it deserved - in addition to 3 very rich states China gave them after Marco Polo Bridge incident.

Now I have 2 options:
• attack Allies (and somehow sneak invade UK and USA and who knows who else will turn major) with no ships and no paratroopers
• backstab the Axis

Axis backstabbing feels a lot more appealing. In about six months I could have about 250 divisions of 7mnt2mspart (disregarding all cavalry on MP duty). Hopefully 125 can hold the line in Europe, as I'd like about 24 to take Suez Canal, and 100 against Japan.

Germany unfortunately has a lot of tanks, so my msparts will have trouble dealing with them, and I don't want to use antitank support - I have art, rocket art, hospital, maintenance, logistics. I guess I could cut maintenance as I can produce huge amounts of military equipment, but it feels like a huge waste.

I could start building some tank divisions as well in addition to my regulars. Then again, it's not like I'm made out of manpower, Japan got most of China so I can't even 2% of that, so my armored divisions will probably be rather limited.

I have 330 factories vs 349 the rest of the Axis has, which is about even, considering I'm on "All adults serve" and they are on less strict laws, but then again I probably have better technology than most of them. And for now they're fighting a war, and I'm not - last serious war I had was first half of war against the Soviets, after that even my war time was rather one sided and with limited losses.

I can't currently import much rubber, as Gibraltar is closed for fighting, even though Suez canal is open, and I have ports on all oceans. Then again, the Axis is pretty low on rubber as well, and Germany seems to be very low on planes - I guess AI sometimes fights even in patch 1.1.

All that "Japan" clay was taken by me - Japan couldn't even keep their invasion of Korea alive. I wonder if I'd get it all if I left the faction earlier. Probably, so I guess staying that long was a mistake.

I took my time. I'm not entirely sure if it benefits me, as everyone has more manpower, so the longer I wait the more troops they could equip.

AIs happily throw troops at each other, so casualties are high, but all majors have huge core populations, so I don't think any of them can plausibly run out.

Waiting also meant a small risk of Axis or Allies getting too strong. Neither side could realistically win, as AI can't naval invade UK, Japan, or especially USA, but if let's say USA spammed naval invasions of Spain and Italy until one sticks, I could end up with very little warscore left for myself.

I had one more trick. AI decides if it wants to put troops on your border or not depending on CBs. If you fabricate on AI, it will use that time to reposition troops on your border. Even 30 day fabrication is enough for them to get some troops and stall me.

On the other hand - if I fabricate on Spain or Italy, Germany and Japan won't take it as a threat, but they'll auto-accept call to arms, so I'll be able to get a lot of clay - and most importantly shorten the frontline - before major fighting starts. At least that's the idea.

Anyway, I extended my ledger to also support factions, and Allies are really strong on paper.

I also tried to get total casualties to the ledger, but they're only saved for active wars, not any past ones.

I'll probably strike mid 1943, there's not much benefit from waiting - it's not like I'm going to get much more manpower. The plan is to:

• not getting overrun in Europe
• shortening the border as much as possible to counter German numerical superiority - especially East Prussia should fall fast
• pushing border in Middle East up to Suez Canal
• pushing Japanese to the Sea

#hoi4 I already conquered it once, I can conquer it second time

The border is very awkward, getting straight line from Berlin to Venice would be much easier to defend

I decided to arbitrarily set day of attack on Italy for May 1st, and predictably the rest of the Axis joined immediately.

One thing I did not consider were all exiled Italian divisions in my territory, which grabbed random tiles all over the place - apparently AI doesn't know how to strategically redeploy exiled divisions.

The plan in China and Middle East went about as well as could be expected - locally overwhelming forces just moved in with minimal resistance.

Much more interesting was situation in Europe. The plan was to pocket Silesia if possible, take East Prussia to prevent Germans from landing anyone there, take part of Serbia on north side of Danube, and push West from Western Hungary toward Vienna, to reach good defensive positions between Danube and its tributaries (Drau, Save, and Inn according to Wikipedia).

To increase chances of Silesia pocket succeeding I pushed with a few divisions west of it to pin any potential German reinforcements. Dresden and Leipsig were two tiles away from my borders, so I thought why not. And actually Berlin was only 5 tiles away from the border, so that fell within 8 days into the war.

And Allies succeeded at capturing Netherlands and Hamburg / Bremen area. So by May 11th Germany was 60% toward capitulation.

One awkward problem was that Bulgaria flipped fascist, joined Axis, and attacked me one week into the war, and of course our border was completely undefended, but by that time Silenias pocket closed, freeing some troops.

Amazingly Germany capitulated within a month, before I got even close to finishing off China. Unfortunately Allies got far too much of it. Well, I guess I'll just keep moving forward in Europe. Italy, Vichy France, Spain, Bulgaria, and Greece are still in the Allies.

#hoi4 I expect the rest of the Axis to get overran as soon as I can reorganize my frontlines.

Small pinning attacks towards Dresden/Leipzig were done just to prevent Germans from saving Silesian pocket. I thought I'd need to do whole front defense and I wanted to shorten frontlines fast to make my defense easier - before I could send troops from China to do proper fighting in Europe.

Random Italian exiles

Their sense of timing is amazing. They were protected by UK guarantee, so they were pretty safe before that.

Germany completely overran. I'm not even sure why it was so one-sided. I was worried that not using anti-tanks and planes might be a mistake, but turns out it's just fine.

Faction map. I wish Japan/Siam took over French Vietnam, then I'd be able to reach the bastards.

No idea how to invade. I still have 0 ships, I only just started building some light cruisers, but it will take at least a year before I have anything. I have a lot of fighters, but no paratrooper tech, so that way would take a year as well.

Axis lost about half of everything after German capitulation, and then half of the rest in next two months as Axis members started falling one after the other.

I tried to get Switzerland in the war too, but somehow they got guaranteed by France and Sweden right away.

It turned out I had some unused discount on paratrooper tech from national focus, so I could get them in 50 days. Why not, I'll just retrain some cavalry and I'll get Japan in reasonable timeframe. It's a bit cheesy to go:

• recruit cavalry
• change them to paratroopers
• paradrop, capture port so supplies can flow
• change them to heavy infantry
• convoys with supplies with somehow sneak in and bring everything with no risk
• take Japan with overwhelming firepower

Hopefully once this war is over some countries like fascist Netherlands will leave the Allies so I don't need to go to war with the whole world at once. I'll have to eventually, as this is one-tag game, but it's easier to do it in batches.

I went scrapping the barrel, I might unscrap that after the war, which is somewhat cheesy but I didn't make the rules.

I did the cheesy thing of paradropping, then changing template I've seen marco antonio do.

That made Japan even easier than it usually is. Now I have two choices:
• go to war with the Allies - that will take forever, as I have only a few ships, and US will be quite hard to conquer. Then again, I might try Kamchatka to Alaska way and hope it's undefended.
• go to war with some non-faction country like fascist Netherlands (who left Allies as soon as war was over) or neutral Portugal. There's still decent change they'd join the Allies immediately.

Most of my planes, artillery, tanks etc. are never going to be used, as they're old models or captured light tanks etc. I let stockpile accumulate as honestly there's not that much to do with IC as this point.

They definitely have more trouble with damaged IC, but it's not a huge deal. France has 120 IC, but 29 of that is damaged, for other countries it's not a huge deal.

I don't expect the war be anything less than Allies getting completely overran in Europe and Asia, followed by some kind of paradrop to UK and Indonesia.

I got rid of scrapping the barrel and went down to limited exports.

With captured dockyards I can build 50 light cruisers a year - so in less than a year I should have strong enough fleet to be able to escort invasions in one place, even if not enough to challenge Allies to a decisive battle.

The most tedious part will be dealing with resistance, as patch 1.1 didn't fix that at all, but at least I have manpower for it.

#hoi4 It's not exactly exploit, as it requires a port, take them a few weeks to get those guns, and cost them experience, but still feels a bit silly.

I went back to savegame from start of war with the Axis to try to figure out why Germany was so weak.

Short story is that they had 133 divisions trying to force their way to Sweden, which was defended by 73 Swedish and 33 allied divisions. Amazingly that was only slightly out of supply as those areas have very good infrastructure, and many of these divisions were actually expeditionary corps which tend to be somewhat smaller. Also AI seems to have figured out 7inf2art, a lot of countries use it by mid-game.

And so Germans burned through all their equipment, had massive shortages of everything (like 200-300 days shortages, with more being burned every day), and while they could replace manpower losses, most of their divisions went to green experience level. Of course it didn't help that all the IC Germany took was mostly useless due to sabotage, and Germany wasn't very focused with ICs it had, building three kinds of tanks, multiply types of planes and so on.

Which brings us to the question - how the hell Sweden had that many divisions?

Moving back to present time, I looked at the Allies before the war - most have close to no forces as they were just released in peace deal recently, or lost a lot during failed naval invasions AI loves to spam.

Wait, what the hell Sweden? What kind of ridiculously overpowered national focus tree they've got? And apparently they don't - they got a total of +1% recruitable pop from their tree, which is more than usual +0% for democracies, but I got +7% from generic tree as fascist. Sweden was in fact at 25% base from scrapping the barrel, but it simply kept their whole army guarding the straits, building it up with only modest losses while Germans were killing themselves in droves trying to cross.

The only thing Swedish focus tree did was made them choose to join the Allies instead of staying neutral as they tend to do, and even generic tree has some chance of abandoning neutrality.

Here you have it - Germany lost the war to join effort of Sweden and Hungary, with everything else being a sideshow. At least it's hard to accuse the game of railroading historical choices.

The plan is simple:
• fabricate on newly released Italy and Germany
• they inevitably get guarantee spammed by the Allies
• keep buying stuff from Portugal (tungsten) and Netherlands (rubber), leaving me with modest oil (long term, as there are no major sources except in US; I'll capture some here and there, but not enough to cover shortages) and steel (for a short while, until I take Alsace and Sweden) shortages after the war starts - I have far too much chromium and aluminum, and they're of relatively little use; it's not even that I don't have oil or steel, I just have obscene amount of military production
• fight the Allies, freshly released ones like France and Belgium are nearly defenseless; Raj will be a bit of a fight, but shouldn't be too bad
• take over various minors like Estonia, Finland, Switzerland, and whatever is that bordergone in the Balkans
• I had very bad experience with Sweden straits in my previous campaigns, and no navy (some paratroopers, but against this kind of defense it's probably not the best idea), so definitely invade via Finland, not via straits
• capture get Suez and Gibraltar to prevent any shenanigans
• after hopefully short campaign Allies will be reduced to various islands and deep Africa; not sure how to deal with the islands and for that matter with the US, but that can wait

#hoi4 Loaded save of "How Germany lost the war". Just look at everybody else those divisions could have been fighting.

War plan in Europe and Africa. Oh and somehow there are two Spains.

War plan Asia. You can also see amazing AI skill at balancing the frontlines is it just loves putting 1 division per tile, then everything else on ends (like that Raj 18-division tile on Raj/France/Hungary border). I had to split a few such clumps manually as they were eating too much local supply.

• every country starts with tag like SPA, FRA, GER etc.
• when country flips ideology, it keeps its tag - there's no silliness like EU3's special "RFR" tag for "Revolutionary France".
• when civil war erupts, it creates dynamic tag, like D01, D02 etc., with original_tag saved
• country's name and flag are based on combination of original tag and ideology
• so FRA/fascist will be "Vichy France", but D02(original FRA)/fascist will also be "Vichy France"
• I don't think there's any way to do tag switching like in EU3/EU4 style BRA into PRU into GER into HRE
• after D01 (Nationalist Spain) wins the civil war, it doesn't become SPA - even if it's released as democratic and joins the Allies; that means original tag is still releasable
• so you can have two Spains very easily
• this could be fixed in a straightforward patch
• there's also some shenanigans with East/West Germany tags, merging two Communist Chinas, and probably some others I missed.

Day of attack was February 7th 1944. I had initial shortages of oil, tungsten (Portugal decided to change its export laws), and steel.

Initial phase of the war went about as well as could be expected - I didn't attack Raj as I couldn't be bothered to micro everything simultaneously.

I tried to sneak across Swedish straits as they had just 2 divisions defending them, but they reinforced, so I stopped it. Briefly it was empty again, so I tried to sneak in again, but they reinforced a few hours too fast. Oh well, not a big deal.

I tried a different way of managing resistance - all police is put into one army, and 1-province long fallback lines are created in various resisting provinces. This seems marginally easier than manually telling my cavalry to strategically redeploy themselves.

In a bit over a month, first stage is complete:
• France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Yugoslavia, Switzerland all taken
• Suez Canal, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia all taken
• Raj cut at Dacca
• armies progressing a bit in West Raj, French Vietnam, and Finland

Next stage will be Estonia, Scandinavia, Raj, Mayalsia, and a bit more of African coast.

So far casualties count is 19k to 602k, and armies are now 3630k to 8070k.

Troops I sent to Africa turned out to be of some use, as Allies packed it full with troops. Both West Africa and East Africa armies got very good pockets.

In North Scandinavia supply is really miserable, but it's slowly getting there.

Raj capitulated - and it had some really big and really miserable supply. It's not just infrastructure levels, it's how many states make up one supply region - which in turns lowers everyone's supply as you control only small part of incoming edge tiles.

Malaysia at least was nice in terms of both supply and pocketing. It's just one pocket away from being all mine.

The only downside is that Canada took over Galicia, which is technically mine, but neither Portugal nor Republican Spain will let me pass there by land.

For that matter Portugal seems to be sending volunteers to 8 of my enemies. I might need to do something about that.

So far casualties count is 104k to 2806k, and armies are now 3895k to 6672k.

I now have huge surplus of all resources except for the shortage of oil - and light cruisers (now version 4) have priority. My fleet is up to 51 ships, 1 of which accidentally spawned in Marseille, but it managed to get away in spite of enemy trying to attack it 3 times.

The plan is:
• finish off all Americans, Brits, and who knows who else in the Raj - then capture nearby islands; Australia is now a major, so I'll need to deal with it too, so might as well do it soon
• keep pushing in Scandinavia as much as supplies allow - this needs to be followed by invasion of the UK
• get some clay in Africa because why not
#hoi4 Cleaning up resistance after Raj surrendered.

And they say there's nothing of value in Africa

Advancing runs into supply problems.

Why bother with tanks if infantry is so good at pocketing?

East African pocket

Canada stronk

And that how Raj fell. Those narrow advance lines tend to run into supply problems anywhere I try them, here it was particularly bad.

After nearly 5 months of fighting, it's still quite far from victory. The upside is that by the time I want to invade someone, my fleet will be ready.

It somehow took me very long time to figure out that supply in Scandinavia was so bad simply because infrastructure was damaged, and there wasn't really any deeper reason for it - as soon as it got repaired, I could do whatever I wanted there. Still, I preferred to move cautiously, so Sweden is only just on the verge of capitulation, and Norway is still quite far from collapsing.

I started island hopping - first Ceylon, North Borneo, and Philippines, then two invasions of Papua (I didn't even notice there was a strait between the two), then two invasions of Australia - in Darwin and Townsville.

Africa was waiting for improved infrastructure as well, front moving a bit, but not too far.

All this is really slow, but body count is extremely biased 137k vs 4285k, and armies are now 3888k vs 5758k.

My fleet is big enough that I can send half of it to UK just fine. Then again, I should probably take New Zealand while I'm there just in case it becomes a major too. And I'd prefer to use my whole fleet, just in case US accidentally figured out how to spam light cruisers too.

#hoi4 Island hopping. I won't bother with Hawaii or Alaska, I'll get US from Atlantic side, but Australia is a major power somehow.

I seriously dislike how AI naval invasions with multiple targets always do 1:7 not 4:4. It's still safer than single landing.

One column follows coast to Malmo, second follows coast to Oslo. It takes time, but it's not like my fleet is big enough to cover two big invasion routes.

It seems that I somehow lost 1 division in Africa, no idea when or where. 47 divisions spread from one end of Africa to the other are not exactly much for daring maneuvers. I just column march pocket (for easy kills) or whole front push (for better supply) or forget about Africa for a while because it's the least important frontline.

I'm starting to question 7mnt 2mspart build - even with logistics companies it's taking a ton of supplies. 6mnt 2art 1mtank has roughly comparable stats (some better, some worse) but uses 1.00 supply instead of 1.23 (with my set of supports etc.), at cost of a 15% more IC.

I've been using infantry column orders as something that my army can competently execute and it takes no micro and tends to result in extremely skewed K:D ratio.

I finished off Sweden, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand - then I invaded Iceland, Greenland, and Scotland. UK is a lot better defended than in 1936 invasions, but I don't think it's going to survive long.

I expect UK to capitulate by the end of the year, but at this rate invasion of Canada will probably take place in 1946, and WC might have to wait until 1948 or so.

At least I'll have nuke tech in February 1946. I've built a bunch of nuclear reactors, so nukes will start coming probably March-April 1946.

Then again, game crashed once already, so it could end up like my Germany campaign on 1.0.

So far casualties count is 164k to 5108k, and armies are now 3891k to 5906k.

#hoi4 Much more opposition than in 1936

Finally

Not sure if that was good idea. All victory points are in the South-East, and it's just two level-1 ports that brought almost no supplies. I should probably have landed in Canberra/Sydney/Melbourne area.

Sweden landed some troops, which was surprising as straits were blocked, but I don't usually bother clearing up random islands. I misclicked and had both fleets here not just one, so I did two invasions.

Infantry column tactic (drop off one unit per tile as you advance) on both sides. If you have initiative and a shitton of soft attack, it's best way to get whatever you want (huge pockets, key victory points) with very little micro.
Sometimes I tell everybody not in the attack to form frontline, sometimes I don't, it work about equally well either way.

The downside is that if one of divisions involved in the column loses organization, you'll

I deployed all obsolete aircraft to some faraway air fields - this cost me manpower, but at least makes interface usable.

I split my navy into 4, trying to clean up whatever was left of Allied navies in Europe, and they were constantly fighting, but I have no idea if they were getting someone, or just getting into endless loop of spotting sub which then ran away.

I deployed some paratroopers just to clean up random islands to deny those subs any ports, but a lot of them paradropped with losses - in spite of nobody being on these island, not one shit, no AA, nothing. I don't even know how it works any more.

Their ship count decreased from 643 in August to 477 in December, so I guess I was doing something right.

By the end of the year I got South Africa, UK, Ireland, and even managed to invade Newfoundland. The only Allied countries which did not capitulate yet were Canada and US (both obviously majors), and there were some Allied forces in Africa, and presumably a bunch on random islands I never bothered to capture.

Newfoundland, Greenland, and Iceland were building infrastructure (and it was also queued in Kamchatka, but pretty low in priority list) in preparation for receiving some armies, but navies were pretty busy.

So far casualties count is 168k to 5645k and armies are now 4176k to 6231k. I'm obviously not killing them fast enough, as they've been training new troops faster than I destroy them.

It was risky, but then what else could I do (except go through Alaska or South America). I invaded Quebec from Newfoundland. I thought I'd switch mountaineers for marines in those few divisions, but somehow I forgot to research marines ever. Oops.

Well, I prepared invasion in deep nowhere, with plan to build a port there before bastard figure out what happened and in the mean time I started dropping nuclear bombs.

6 bombs reduced Canadian national unity from 90% to 22%, which was good enough to actually take them without conquering every last bit of wasteland.

Unfortunately they managed to send armies to meet my invasion, and I could barely hold my ground while ports and infrastructure were slowly building up.

Even more unfortunately due to really retarded way supplies work in the game, that wouldn't help, they were flowing backwards from no-infrastructure Quebec (as I had two ports there, but didn't fully control) to high-infrastructure Labrador (which had only one port, but I fully controlled so I could fix its infrastructure). Usually supply system bugs are tolerable, this one was really nasty, as I could have easily started moving forward if it was fixed. Instead I had to build 3 ports in Labrador...

Fortunately second invasion at Halifax worked out better. Unfortunately they suffered massively in process, so I waited for second port to be built in Halifax, from better side, before sending reinforcement.

After that it went smoothly - I captured airport in New England, dropped 4 bombs on US from there, dropping their national unity from 55% to 20%.

Finally, after year of heavy fighting, by end of 1946 I managed to connect by two invasions, and wreck both USA and Canada quite well, getting them to brink of capitulation.

Unfortunately meanwhile Brazil joined the Allies as another major, so it's going to take a while longer. I have 35 bombs and produce them in huge numbers, but it's not like Brazil would just capitulate because I drop a few there.

Canada capitulated before Christmas 1946, and US before end of January 1947, with no more nukes necessary.

Unfortunately Mexico joined in addition to Brazil, so I had two majors to defeat. Allies army was reduced to just 1975k at this point - 833k of that USA divisions that somehow escaped surrender.

I really didn't want to bother with another naval invasion nonsense, so I declared war on everyone between Mexico and Brazil, and dropped a bunch of bombs on Mexico City, so Mexico capitulated mid March.

Unfortunately from that point on I started doubting my idea of invading my land - it was narrow low infrastructure passage, and everybody was throwing all they've got at stopping me there.

After a few pockets sufficiently reduced enemy numbers I told African field marshal to just finish them off.

Casualties climbed to 370k to 8913k, but Allies armies still have 1823k men - mostly due to new members.

I assumed the war will end with capitulation of the US, and I'll have a good chunk of the world to conquer afterwards - but instead I'm goint to Brazil anyway. It was also helpful initially to stay at peace with Portugal and Netherlands, so I can trade with them, but it's no longer relevant. So instead fabricate on everyone.

Going through Central America was extremely painful - and they've thrown like 20k planes or so over it, but then I've noticed that they've been trying to stick 19183 airplanes in airport with 800 capacity, so I can actually outshoot the bastards. Well, it would have been a lot faster if I knew it earlier.

Somehow that stacking penalty didn't seem to bother AI, and we both lost similar numbers of planes.

By the end of the year, only Brazil was still fighting - and a few South American minors were yet to be forced into the war.

Even with me automating most of the fighting, casualties are 437k to 10,379k, and armies are 4172k to only 799k.
#hoi4 Getting through Central America was really slow. I had a backup plan of some extra naval landings, but ended up not using it because I accidentally deleted it when I was cleaning up orders on Cuba's landing. Cuba was delayed because of their focus button delaying fabrications. All of them joined us after Colombia was taken.

If there's a way to have good K:D ratio is the air, I don't know it. 2146 heavy fighters take 86k men to operate, so I hope they don't suffer 100% losses when planes are lost, or that would be very painful. Probably not as I lost only 67k men in last half year, and that's with AI-automated frontlines.

Everything except South America is taken or random island belonging to a country which already surrendered.

One small surprise I had in my Hungary campaign was that my 7mnt 2mspart's armor was getting pierced in South America by regular infantry. I thought maybe they were using support antitanks, which would be surprising, but turns out not so.

6mnt 2art 1mtank will never have this problem, as it always has armor >30.
Neither would one with modern spart - something I could switch to by that time, but I somehow couldn't be bothered.
Or presumably if I got medium spart variant up to level 5 armor, it would be at almost 30.
#hoi4

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